

@PuddleOfKittens It is very much a mistake to suggest that “traditional” cities grew “organically” or “naturally”, or even that they represent “human scale”. Human settlement has always been subject to land use restrictions. The European and Japanese cities featured in this article as exemplars evolved they way they did under severe feudal land restrictions, not because there was any kind of conscious choice to build that way. Article is 11 yrs old, “New Urbanism” is no longer fashionable.
@SteveKLord ’ Tests, carried out as part of its work, have shown that water can be absorbed at a rate of 10,000 litres per square metre, per hour. ’
1 square meter of surface area at 1 cm is 10 litres, so a square metre would have to pass 10 metres (1000 cm) deep of water per hour, or a velocity of 2.78 centimetres per second, unless I did the math wrong.
That seems like a very high number for a ceramic to filter, even considering the gaps.